Who wrote this?

Rob is 28 (but needs his beard to actually look like it), loves music, adventures and spontaneous people. His scribblings are about these things too, so if you share his interests, stay tuned!

Next week is 5 Days Off, and I know a lot of people are still undecided on which nights to attend. We already asked some music connoisseurs to help you out with their advice, but if you’re still undecided, read on. I spoke to the hosts of 3 of the 5 theme nights that are part of 5 Days Off: Closer, Colors and Foxes & Wolves. Jorn, Volcmar and Job explain their brain child below! DMZ and Modeselektion are the other two, but these international Juggernauts are already very well known.

Jorn Liefdeshuis is co-founder of and DJ at Closer, Volcmar Lammer is co-founder of Colors and Job de Wit is resident DJ at Foxes & Wolves.

Jorn Liefdeshuis explaining Closer

Closer is my new monthly club night that takes place at the Melkweg, It’s a place where me and Hidde (the electronic music programmer of the Melkweg) can really do what we like best, and that’s a combination between a lot of different styles of music, ranging from bass to techno and from synth-pop to electronica. The most important part is the feeling it gives, the emotion. We’re looking for some kind of beautiful, almost romantic, sound, and try and combine that with a dancefloor. I don’t care if it’s called dubstep or glo-fi-ambient-slow-rock. If it sounds good, it is good. We really just started, we’ve had two editions and the website came online a few weeks ago. We’re doing the night on every second Friday of the month and 5 Days Off will be an extra edition.

The first edition, a Border Community night with Ricardo Tobar, Wesley Matsell and myself was a big success with a good enthusiastic crowd, and from here we will take it one step at a time, progress slowly, getting bigger and better each month. For me, the 5 Days Off night is going to be one big highlight, the line-up really is insane. I’ve never seen Zomby, so for me that’s the one to def. watch, but Lone, Caribou, Gold Panda and Dear are all great as well. Caribou is known as the band, but the DJ sets are mind blowing. He’s mixing Theo Parrish with Zomby and Four Tet with his own stuff, really all over the place, but a great vibe, and perfect for the dancefloor.

My dream line-up for a Closer night? It would definitely involve Caribou, Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Zomby and Gold Panda are also on the list. Lone, James Holden, Luke Abbott, Four Tet, Apparat, guess thats a already going to be a pretty full night! Oh and Aphex Twin b2b with Boards of Canada… and J Dilla!

Volcmar Lammers explaining Colors

Before Colors, I was in involved in Lockdown, which were dubstep parties on initially secret locations in Amsterdam. As Lockdown grew we started cooperating with Viral Radio, who were doing similar things and is ran by Cinnaman and Juha. Cinnaman was send some Roska tunes by Mark Pritchard, that’s how we more or less got familiar with the genre UK Bass / UK Funky or whatever you want to call it, and we suggested starting a night featuring this kind of music, with Lukas Nieuwenhuijsen also getting involved. We pitched it to Trouw who eventually gave us a chance in de Verdieping which was a huge success. We had Roska and Untold, and I can tell you it was a bit quiet in Trouw’s big room. Three more successful editions have followed since, featuring Joy Orbison/Jackmaster, the Night Slugs crew and the Hessle Audio crew.

For the future, we are planning a small intimate Colors festival on a fortress island near Amsterdam. It’s on Cinnaman’s birthday so we want to bring in some local and international talent to celebrate it well, and on a great location. You’ll here more about this soon. For 5 Days Off we have a great set of DJ’s lined up too. Joy Orbison will surely be great again, as he was in Trouw. We are also proud to have MJ Cole, who goes way back in the garage genre and I can’t wait to see Ikonika and Optimum because they will play live, their releases together are great and it is their debut in Holland.

My dream line-up for Colors? Everyone from the Night Slugs and Swamp81 camps, and Jackmaster who is just a quality DJ, but all of them together would take more than one night!

Job de Wit explaining Foxes & Wolves

Foxes & Wolves is a reaction to a new kind of dance that you can’t really call house. My way to describe this new genre is a change from ‘boom boom’ to ‘boom clap’ in house music.. Some call it disco, but it’s not the same as the disco from the ’70s, more a new kind of disco. Hidde (music programmer from the Melkweg) asked me, Tom Trago, Tettero and Casper from Dekmantal to rotate as resident DJs and give feedback on this line-up ideas, and that’s how we started out in the end of 2009. We had a few editions which did well, then had a little break, and switched tothe Melkweg’s Saturday last October which saw a whole new unsuspecting crowd get introduced to our nu-disco beats.

The highlights so far have been a gig by Metro Area, who are forerunners in this new genre, and a gig by French singer Yelle who broke down the house. This summer we have plans to do new stuff, like host an area at Rockit festival, and maybe more. For 5 Days Off I have high expectations of Hercules and Love Affair, because they just have a new album and an amazing new singer. I really hope I can keep up with all these big guns with my own DJ set. Especially with a crowd which is really coming for this kind of music.

My dream line-up for Foxes & Wolves? A DJ set by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, a real nu-disco expert, Azari & III’s new live act which I am very curious about, Prins Thomas, a nu-disco pioneer who sounds very psychedelic and Maurice Fulton, another disco pioneer from the US who mixes ’80s and nu-disco and is a musical genius.